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Part #6: The Separation of Church and State myth

Separation of Church and State and the Establishment Clause



This rung on the ladder addresses the most voraciously debated instrument of Marxist sedition we have in this country, the grossly misunderstood concept of "separation of church and state" and the equally misunderstood "establishment of religion" clause of the 1st Amendment.

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This un-American freedom destroying concept actually is an integral component of Marx generated secular humanism and its counterpart Communism. Secular humanists (communists) are atheists passionately obsessed with replacing our liberty granting "God" with an all powerful, ruthless, international secular state. The subject of religion is an essential ingredient in the official recipe of "nationhood" and one of the major principles of unity upon which this nation was founded. It needs to be addressed in this context. The legal definition of "nation" is: "a kindred community of people descended from a common ancestor; speaking the same language; and professing the same religion". All "law" emerges from a religious theology of some kind or another. Thomas Cooley, an eminent scholar and legal authority rivaling the venerated Joseph Story, writes in his Constitutional Commentaries: ...the Supreme Being Himself as the author of all good, and of all law. The religious dispositions of the "host" body politic from which a "nation" emerges (from a family; to a clan; to a tribe; and then to the "nation"); are the source and foundation of that "nation's" foundational "organic law" and its public morals. The Founding Fathers did not intend to exclude God and religion from the operations of civil government. The common religious beliefs of our Founders formed the basic foundation of our government and serve as its guiding moral conscience. They did not intend to erect a purely secular socialist welfare state. (The 14th Amendment intends that.) The 14th Amendment (whose purpose is the protection of minorities), adversely altered the Founders' "original intent" with respect to the 1st Amendment's "establishment clause". (More in part #7). The 14th Amendment forces State governments to conform to federal international law mandates incompatible with the common-law principles guaranteed by the State Constitutions. (The Founding Fathers had nothing to do with the 14th Amendment. Had they been around at the time it was proposed, they would have most assuredly insisted on its immediate dissolution.) The history of the 1st Amendment, the events that precipitated it, and the mischief that it was enacted to correct, begins before the 14th Amendment's ratification. On July 4, 1821, John Quincy Adams, our sixth President, declared: "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration of Independence, the American people were bound by the laws of God and the laws of the Gospel which they nearly all acknowledge as the rules of their conduct. "The Declaration of Independence first organized the  'social compact'on the foundation of the Redeemer 's mission upon Earth and laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity". The Northwest Ordinance, which antedated the 1st Amendment, provides in Article III: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged". Words and wisdom from the Opinion of Justice Rehnquist in Wallace v. Jaffree: "It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of constitutional history. Unfortunately the Establishment Clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson ºs misleading metaphor for nearly 40 years. Thomas Jefferson was in France at the time the constitutional Amendments known as the Bill of Rights were passed by Congress and ratified by the States. His letter to the Danbury Baptist's Association; "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should  'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof', thus building a wall of separation between church and state" was a short note of courtesy, written 14 years after the Amendments were passed by Congress. He would seem a less than ideal source of contemporary history as to the meaning of the Religion clauses of the 1st Amendment". Mr. Justice Douglas, in Zorach v. Clauson wrote: "we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being". In McGowan v. Maryland, Mr. Justice Douglas again writes: "The institutions of our society are founded on the belief that there is an authority higher than that of the state; that there is a moral law which the state is powerless to alter; that the individual possess rights conferred by the Creator which government must respect". Engle v. Vitale referred to statements made by some of our former Presidents emphasizing the importance the deeply entrenched religious traditions played in defining our nation's history. To wit: On April 30, 1789, President George Washington said: "It would be improper to omit my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose Providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States, the Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success, the functions allotted to its charge. No people can be more bound to acknowledge and adore that Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men than those of the United States. He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquility, with the dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advancement of their happiness, so may His Divine Blessings be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this government may depend". On March 4, 1805, President Thomas Jefferson said: "I shall need too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers as the Israel of old from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His Providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their counsels, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure you to peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations". On March 4, 1885, President Grover Cleveland said: "Let us not trust to human efforts alone, but humbly acknowledge the power and goodness of Almighty God, who presides over the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been revealed in our country ºs history, let us invoke His aid and His blessings upon our labors". On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy said: "The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebearers fought are still at issue around the globe - the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God".

This is the America our Founding Fathers gave us.

The 1st Amendment was solely a prohibition upon Congress. We find it said in McGowan v. Maryland that the immediate object of the 1st Amendment ºs prohibition was the "established" church as it had been known in England. The evil aimed at was an "establishment" of a "national" church and perhaps the preference of one religious sect (denomination) over another. Prior to the 14th Amendment, each State was composed of a unique political community of settlers having its own cohesive common norms and values. The public policy and laws of that State reflected these sets of common values. Each State was free to go its own way and pursue its own policy with respect to religion. Engle v. Vitale speaks of an unfortunate fact of history in that the same groups which had most strenuously opposed the established church of England, ended up themselves writing their own prayers into law, and making their own religion the official religion of their respective colonies. As late as the time of the Revolutionary War, there were "established" churches in at least eight of the thirteen former colonies, and "established" religions in at least four of the other five, ostensibly declaring that the Protestant religion shall be the "established" religion in that State. Samuel Adams º "Rights of Colonists" excluded "papists" (Catholics) from the claimed universal right to religious toleration, in that they were thought to teach doctrines subversive to civil government. It was alleged that Catholics º absolute allegiance to the Pope and their fear of excommunication from the Catholic Church would supersede their allegiance to a Protestant government. The Catholic faith had been brought to North America by the Spanish and French long antecedent to the arrival of the English on the Eastern Seaboard and was firmly rooted in the North American continent To dispel any doubt about the Founding Fathers' "intent" with regard to the 1st Amendment ºs original purpose, the following excerpt is taken, in pertinent part, from the Constitutional Commentaries of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, one of our most venerated jurists and legal scholars. To wit: "Piety, morality, and religion are intimately connected with the well being of the state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to Him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues; these can never be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community. It is difficult to conceive how any civilized society can well exist without them. It is impossible for those who believe in the truth of Christianity as a divine revelation to doubt that it is the special duty of government to foster and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects. The difficulty lies in where government creates an ecclesiastical establishment for the propagation of the doctrines of a particular sect of religion. There will probably be found a few persons in this, or any other Christian country, who would contend that it was unreasonable or unjust to foster and encourage the Christian religion generally, as a matter of sound policy, as well as of revealed truth. Every American colony from its foundation down to the Revolution, did openly by the whole course of its laws and institutions, support and sustain in some form, the Christian religion. This has continued to be the case in some of the States down to the present period without the slightest suspicion that it was against the principles of public law or republican liberty. Montesquieu has remarked that the Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospels is incompatible with the despotic rage. He has gone even further and affirmed that the Protestant religion is far more congenial with the spirit of political freedom than the Catholic. He says, when the Christian religion two centuries ago became unhappily divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the north embraced the Protestant and those of the south still adhered to the Catholic. The people of the north have, and will ever have, a spirit of liberty and independence which the people of the south have not. A religion which has no visible head is more agreeable to independency than one which has one. In most of the colonies the same rigid jealousy has been maintained almost down to our times. Massachusetts, while she has promulgated in her Bill of Rights the importance and necessity of the public support of religion and Worship of God, has authorized the legislature to require it only for Protestantism. The language of that Bill of Rights is remarkable for its pointed affirmation of the duty of government to support Christianity. The reasons for it being the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality. These cannot be generally diffused through the community but by the institution of the public Worship of God and of public instructions in piety, religion, and morality. Therefore, to promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this Commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require they make suitable provisions at their own expense for the institution of the public Worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provisions shall not be made voluntarily, prohibiting any superiority of one sect over another. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the Amendment to it, the general if not universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs whether any free government can be permanent where the public worship of God and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignably shape. The future experience of Christendom, chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem as yet new in the history of the world, in experiments in the theory of government. The duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them for worshiping God in the manner which they believe their accountability to Him requires. The rights of conscience are indeed beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God and cannot be encroached upon by human authority without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural as well as of revealed religion. The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, Judaism, or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any "national" ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the "national" government. In some of the States, Episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others, Presbyterians; in other, Congregationalists; in yet others, Quakers; and in others there was a close numerical rivalry of contending sects. It was impossible not to arouse a perpetual strife and jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy if the "national" government was left free to create a religious "establishment". The only security was in extirpating that power. The whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the State Constitutions. The Catholic, the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Armenian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the "national" councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship". This is the factually correct real history and state of affairs in the United States with respect to religion before the 14th Amendment ºs ratification - as stated so eloquently by one of this country ºs most prominent jurists and legal scholars. The church in the USSR (not in the USA) is separated from the state. The Tax Free Foundations' stated plan is to "CHANGE" that. Part #7 will conclude this series with a discussion of the 14th Amendment.


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Frank Polacek -- Bio and Archives

Frank Polacek an Air Force veteran; served a yr. (1967) in Viet-Nam; owned a trucking business; worked as a diesel and heavy equipment mechanic; a welder and structural fabricator. Retired for health reasons but try to remain politically active.


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